With President Obama readying an overhaul of the nation’s gun laws, a liberal think tank with singular influence throughout his administration is pushing for a sweeping agenda of strict new restrictions on and federal oversight of gun and ammunition sales.

Insisting that he is still a Republican, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Chuck Hagel is “superbly qualified” to be the next secretary of state and he is confident that the former Nebraska senator “will do a great job.” “I think he gets confirmed,” Powell asserted. “He’s superbly qualified based on his overall record, based on his service to the country, based on how he feels about troops and veterans and their families.” Powell, who supported President Barack Obama in each of his election bids, spoke at length about Hagel’s accomplishments, going...

A series of military options are being actively considered as the war of words over the islands intensifies. It is understood that additional troops, another warship and extra RAF Typhoon combat aircraft could be dispatched to the region ahead of the March referendum on the Falkland Islands’ future. The options being proposed by planners at the Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood, north-west London are also said to include a “show of force” such as conducting naval exercises in the South Atlantic. These could involve the deployment of the Royal Navy’s Response Task Force Group, a flotilla comprising destroyers, a frigate,...

President Barack Obama said U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan will adopt a “support role” starting in the spring of 2013, to allow Afghan police and soldiers to take full responsibility of the country’s security, a nation where 2,053 American soldiers have died since the war started on Oct. 7, 2001. Seventy-two percent of those casualties occurred during Obama's first term. “And today we agreed, as Afghan forces take the lead and as President Karzai announces the final phase of the transition, coalition forces will move to a support role this spring,” Obama said Friday at the White House, alongside...

In the last seven years, 144 officers and agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have been arrested or indicted on corruption charges that include smuggling illegal aliens, smuggling drugs, and bribery, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). … “From fiscal years 2005 through 2012, a total of 144 employees were arrested or indicted for corruption related activities, including smuggling aliens or drugs, and 125 have been convicted,” the GAO report says. “About 65 percent (93 of 144) were employees stationed along the southwest border.” The bulk of corruption cases were for serious offenses, according...

Primitive N.C. retreat a bit too primitive for Watauga officials Watauga County mountain man Eustace Conway’s passion for teaching primitive living came to a sudden halt in October when local government officials shut down his operation, citing safety and health concerns. After receiving a tip that Conway had built structures without a permit, Watauga County Planning and Inspections Director Joe Furman obtained an administrative search warrant to inspect the roughly two dozen buildings and structures at Turtle Island Preserve, Conway’s 500-plus acre retreat in the mountains east of Boone. In September, Furman assembled a team of building inspectors, health department...

Powell: GOP has 'a dark vein of intolerance' By GINGER GIBSON | 1/13/13 11:05 AM EST While continuing to identify as a Republican, former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday criticized the GOP for a series of racist attacks against President Barack Obama. "There's also a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party," Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is they still sort of look down on minorities." Powell, who endorsed Obama, pointed to a number of statements that were directed at Obama as...

"The predominant sources of guns, unsurprisingly, were stores (60 percent). Other important sources included family members and acquaintances. The 3 percent of respondents who indicated that they obtained guns "through the mail" (which is illegal for all but FFLs) may have misremembered or may have referred to a mail-order purchase arranged through an FFL. "The average gun obtained in 1993 and 1994 was worth $392 at the time of transfer, with little difference between handguns and long guns. Fewer than 1 in 20 guns acquired during those 2 years were valued at less than $100. "Fifty-seven percent of firearms were...

It is “none of our business” whether Israel builds new neighborhoods in east Jerusalem or withdraws from the Golan Heights, and the US should not tell Israel how to defend itself, US Sen. (RKentucky) said on Saturday night at the end of a week-long visit to the country. Paul, a maverick libertarian senator known for his advocacy of slashing US foreign aid, said at a press briefing that the issue of cutting aid to Israel – something he advocates as part of a gradual process – did not come up during his meetings with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu or President...

A few years back I was interviewed about some development in the Middle East by a reporter from Al Arabiya, the Saudi-owned television news channel. Afterwards, we sat for a while and talked journalism. He mentioned that he had previously worked for Al Jazeera. I asked why he had left. “Too many Islamists,” he said. “They made me uncomfortable.” It’s bizarre: We used to know a lot about Al Jazeera. At what point did amnesia set in? The station was launched in November 1996. Two months after al-Qaeda’s attacks on New York and Washington, Fouad Ajami, the Lebanese-born American scholar,...

America's Caringest Mayor is at it again: having saved New York from sugary drinks, Michael Bloomberg has turned his attention to painkiller addiction. The best option to prevent kids from abusing Mom's leftover Valium from her back surgery is, of course, curbing the supply of such drugs, so that's just what Bloomberg intends to do. As such, he's introduced a measure that would limit the supply of powerful pain drugs in emergency rooms -- despite the fact that lower-income families often use the ER as their primary care source. No matter: this is for the common good of New York....

JERUSALEM, Israel -- Tens of thousands of Christians are fleeing the Middle East because of persecution. Yet this modern day exodus is getting little attention in the West. Now, a Jewish group is teaming up with Christians to help spread the word about this persecution. Almost 200 million Christians are targeted each year, especially in the birthplace of their faith, the Middle East. Iraq is just one example. "Since 2003, there has been a systematic attack launched against the Christian community and other minorities in Iraq," Juliana Taimoorazy, with the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, said. "Unfortunately the mainstream media and...

A Utah businessman accused of running a fraudulent $350 million software scheme says the state attorney general arranged a deal to pay Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to make a federal investigation into the software business disappear. St. George businessman Jeremy Johnson, who's accused of billing hundreds of thousands of consumers for products they never ordered, told The Salt Lake Tribune that newly elected Utah Attorney General John Swallow set up a deal in 2010 for Johnson to pay $600,000 to people connected to Reid. Johnson says be believed that Reid, a Nevada senator, might intervene in the Federal Trade...

Dana Loesch’s calling out of CNN’s “real journalist” Piers Morgan over his error in categorizing the caliber of the Bushmaster rifle used in the Sandy Hook massacre might seem petty, aside from two reasons. First, Morgan believes he’s fully qualified to determine what weapons American citizens should and should not be allowed to own. Second, he himself wastes no opportunity to call out his detractors on their spelling errors, like so:

In gun lore it’s known as the Revolt at Cincinnati. On May 21, 1977, and into the morning of May 22, a rump caucus of gun rights radicals took over the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association. The rebels wore orange-blaze hunting caps. They spoke on walkie-talkies as they worked the floor of the sweltering convention hall. They suspected that the NRA leaders had turned off the air-conditioning in hopes that the rabble-rousers would lose enthusiasm. The Old Guard was caught by surprise. The NRA officers sat up front, on a dais, observing their demise. The organization, about a...

If you had buttonholed me in the Senate men's room circa 2003 and told me that a decade hence Joe Biden would be America's vice president, John Kerry Secretary of State, and Chuck Hagel Secretary of Defense, I'd have laughed and waited for the punch line: The Leahy administration? President Lautenberg? Celebrate lack of diversity! But even in the republic's descent into a Blowhardocracy staffed by a Zombie House of Lords, there are distinctions to be drawn. Sen. Kerry having been reliably wrong on every foreign policy issue of the past 40 years, it would seem likely that at this...

The hope here is to direct readers' attention to an important piece published today by Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. The article is especially recommended to those who believe that the notion of the U.S. committing mass murder in pursuit of "gun control" is a paranoid, right-wing fantasy. If so, it's a "fantasy" that has already happened. The massacre of Wounded Knee was the direct result of the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry enforcing the government's forcible disarmament edicts against the Sioux Indian Nation. December 29, 2012 marked the 122nd Anniversary of the murder of 297 Sioux Indians at...

(CNSNews.com) - The gun control policies of the post-Gaddafi government in Libya delayed the arming of bodyguards for U.S. diplomats in that country and left the local guard force hired to watch over the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi unarmed, according to internal State Department memos and written testimony by the State Department officer who was in charge of the department’s security in Libya until six weeks before the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks. “Our long term security plan in Libya was to recruit and deploy an armed, locally hired Libyan bodyguard unit,” State Department Regional Security Officer Eric Nordstrom...

Mass shootings, ammunition shortages and fear that government might snatch away gun rights have driven new voices to the gun control debate, and congressional offices are hearing from them. Sen. Bob Casey‘s office has received more than 500 calls on the issue since mid-December, with about 60 percent in favor of reforming gun laws and 40 percent against. Most of the 200 calls to the office of Rep. Mike Doyle, a Forest Hills Democrat, were “very heavily in favor of doing something.” In one Arizona House district, calls were said to be running 9-to-1 against gun control measures. Casey, D-Scranton,...